My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) (3 page)

Back to the South Side—a mistake. Mason was lonely and listening to music. Discharged, he heard the whine of: “Biscuit Roller Blues,” by Kokomo Arnold, Bessie Smith's “Black Mountain Blues,” and the lament of Marcus Garvey's dream: Hazel Meyers' “Black Star Line.” Then he met—in a moment when faith in his muse was a stuck slush pump—the cheerful, eighteen year old Judith Williams: in a living room? on a street corner? in a five and dime . . . ? They hustled each other
down to City Hall. She was warm: a catalyzing refinery. This civil attachment was to last: an assembly of flowing connections, wobbly Christmas tree lights, the wedding of sucker rod and clamp grip, spit, glue wrench and oil fever. Judith wanted to be a movie star: to shine, be bright: she was beautiful,
beautiful:
plum-cocoa colored—Indian, Central West Africa, shades of islands long beneath the ocean. She didn't know “Aunt Jemima Stomp,” from a foot-warmer. But had a wonderful, fluttering voice full of bird cries, torches, Dixie, Soul, branches in the breeze, trombone, sax, and it was easygoing, husky, sweet, any way she wanted it to be: a passionate canary without the screech, churp, tonsil exercise, ear-splitting C's, crooner's frogs, sentiment. Yet, y'yet: where could she go with it—except to the shower, the kitchen? That eat-dog world out there contained only a few successful satchelmouths, catchers of the wire, canners of music, side-makers. Mason loved to listen to her day and night. Listening often took his depression away. You know Judy's story: it's the same . . . She'd grown up with two younger sisters, an illiterate, cheerful mother who worked hard as nails house-cleaning for wealthy folk in Evanston, Trumbell Park, Oak Park, Elk Grove; from turnip greens-South, she knew no other way. Boop-poop-a-dop. I won't tell you the whole jaded story: but, this: there was a stepfather, not the father of any of the three. Never mind that Judy
seduced
him: at twelve. At seventeen she started dating and this shook him. He drank heavily, spied on her in theatres, drive-in snack bars. Tra-la-la. She came to her marriage curved with guilt (“Now, Mason,
you know
my ma
must've
known . . . How
could
she've
not
—?”) and hatred for her mother, herself. Judy and Mason got their first furniture from Sears and the Salvation Army: a let-out couch in a studio apartment with a kitchenette in a basement where they could hear rats in the walls playing chase scenes for screen tests. Mason wanted to be a writer, yes, still; and the Salvation Army typewriter worked and that mattered. As he worked at the kitchen table Judy sometimes sat beneath it playing “Doctor Feel Good.” Kids together, unschooled; fumblers with their Salvation
Army spoons, broken cups, Sears blankets, forks, dusty books, knives, sheets, they had a sort of life, a hey-nonny-nonny chance, hope. Before Judy and Mason came to their whipped senses they were up to their hairline in oozy babyshit, soggy diapers; their ears clogged with choking screams from Salvation Army cribs. The tone of her songs changed: her pair of pipes stumbled and fell down from G above high C to a gutty, inky-dinky low E-flat. With half their Heart in the Church, half in the State, the couple felt trapped between the Devil and Next Month's Rent. C above high C was a thing of bygone giggle-time. Yet Judy held off on the Blues—for, uh, two months. Okay? Then wham: into them lip-quivering mammies she dug: choking up “If I'd Listened To My Mama I Wouldn't Be In This Mess Today,” with the “Bearcat Shuffle” body-shakes. Stingy welfare checks were stolen from their broken mailbox, and (white folks on TV talk-shows Sunday mornings kept saying “If
they'd
only try to do something for themselves and get off welfare, they'd . . . ”) the babies, three, no, four, no, five, were all crying at once, midnight, sun-up, three in the afternoon tea-time, anytime. Their Salvation Army washing machine broke down like their yellow-back radio with the 1948 dials: every month. Repair bills came wearing ski masks. The Platters didn't help with their high harmonizing. Mason didn't feel so smart anymore, was less of a smartass, a pisser-in-pockets, a sitter-on-the-dunce-stool, a spitball-thrower. He
did
consider robbing a bank. But the nerve was on a long vacation, down in some swampy terrain where the blood was thin, cool. He was waiting for a telegraph message: about what? The future? He tried playing the ponies but gave up the sport of kings when, first time out at Arlington, he went to the dogs in a photo-finish. The South Side was a madhouse of stumbling losers two-timing playgirls doublecrossing husbands failures and sneaky wives in search of a break in the flux; Muslims, junkies, devout simple-minded fire-and-brimstone-church-going handclapping holy folk. Judgment Day was only theatre: this was another cantaloupe, a wopper, kicked dust. Who needed it? Judy and Mason had six children in the wink of a birthcontrolless eye. Even his mother, a
tough, hard woman, felt sorry for him. Twins, then twins again, two boys, two girls then a boy and a girl: Linton, Arthur, Patricia, Tina, Keith and Irene. They had big hands and narrow hips like the Williams lineage. They had Chiro's eyes. Mason's mother's mouth; curly hair, full-moon faces, roller-skate-fast minds. Mason lost his interest in fucking. He considered jumping off the Wrigley Building, driving a Suzuki a hundred miles per hour into a stack of old bathtubs, hanging himself with the umbilical cord of a satyr-raped she-goat. Yet there was a small comfort obtained from the government's poverty report: at least they weren't alone. A caseworker pulled his coat, showed him why he felt a draft: “Listen, if you leave, she'll get
twice
as much . . . ” After many weeks of sizzling in the blues, juggling guilt, Mason took the step. Go go go. They had a strict tearful parting: strained: kissed all the brats, gave Judy one last sideways look of heartbroken disapproval. She looked him back: with strait-jacket-fury. They promised to keep in touch. But it was time. (He sent money—thousands—to buy his way emotionally
and
because he cared. Eventually, Judy was afraid he wanted to
take
them from her, so she started moving a lot, concealing her address, maintaining an unlisted number . . . ) It was a private matter: the world had no business looking in on it. He was still lonely, had a firm weakness for Touch: warmth, friendliness, comfort, companionship: was still prisoner of his wing-tipped erections. Not a cold fish, he met Mary Lou the day he left Judy. Six months later she gave birth to triplets. Mason wanted to do King Oliver's “Alligator Hop.”
Six
 . . . ? What happened to eight and one? big universal everlasting nine? That was not the worst of it. He couldn't grab a handful of rods: he was hooked into her, flapping but caught firmly through the gums. Mary Lou, magical Mary Lou: mysterious, secretive, sucked him in slowly, grindingly, leaving him light-headed, restful, unable to move. She was tall, slender, strong, brownstone-brown. I could tell you endless stories about her, her shady past. But—another time. She was so clever the cute girl triplets were dead ringers for Mason. Yet he had no faith in the quality of his spit. Figuring he could get out
later, in fair weather, he decided to spend the winter between Mary Lou's spread thighs. (Mary Lou's mother was a raggedy half-crazy baglady who secretly owned dozens of apartment buildings all over the South Side, a slumlord who ate out of garbage cans; her father, thirty years older than her mother, raised turkeys in El Reno, Oklahoma. Mary Lou had a crazy sister who played piano for a storefront church, was wedded to Jesus; and a younger brother: shot through the head in the Army while crossing in the wrong direction on a firing range in Weatherbeatened, Mississippi.) Mason was hopelessly stuck? Jude the Obscure—worse?
he fucked and fucked till his house fell in!
Mary Lou was a Queen Bee, all right: they fucked up a storm; steam rose from their rooms; lightning struck in the night. Trips to Cook County Hospital became so frequent they lost track of the brats they brought back. Like Frank Buck: they brought ‘em back alive! Mary Lou and Mason couldn't get near each other without going apeshit, ripping each other's clothes off: his tongue in her ear or her mouth full of his cock or . . . you name it. They'd lost any hope of extracting themselves from the abyss, the vortex. Every time he turned around she was unzipping his fly. (Celt watched from a distance but kept out of it. Mason's dream of becoming a famous writer took a walk.) Something had to be wrong in nature, ya know. All these babies and money problems gave Mason the “Coffee Grindin' Blues,” the “Dipper Mouth Blues.” He had a lot of names to memorize: plus he was still in
touch
with Judy and the kids . . . just down the street around the block up the avenue. This was a high price to pay just to have somebody be there. Although Mary Lou was an artist and sensitive and all, she was not talkative. He wasn't either but her silence seemed to compel him to flutter and stammer out an unending stream of obscure sentences adding up to intellectual void-filling nonsense. So love-making was their only natural,
un
affected event. Also Catholic, she was Mother Earth: fuck and be merry was her motto: populate the land, carry on the race. Plus she
loved
children, especially infants. Jude-Mason lay beside Mary Lou through the cold nights listening to her
whimper: “Nobody can do me like Papa Cow Cow can do,” and clawing at him. She often imitated Sara Martin singing, “Eagle Rock Me, Papa.” But Mason was crying the “Bullheaded Woman Blues.” He lost his slave and it took three months to discover he wasn't qualified for unemployment compensation: hadn't been standing tall on the job long enough. He sneezed at snazzy dudes in the street: suspected Mary Lou was stepping out on him. (She
was
—and he was cheating, too. Ugly scene.) The welfare cycle hit: Mary Lou could become a prostitute and he could join a gang of thieves. Consider this: Mary Lou could confess to the priest and kill herself. The children might be adopted by happy, well-adjusted middle-class Negro families making it on the outskirts of town. (Liberal whites hadn't started adopting black kids yet.) Mason, in all fairness, could also kill himself. Everything after that . . . Smooth sailing? He split for New York.

The background of such a madman is at least of clinical interest. I strain to find something good to say. Does such a personality evolve from insecurity, a feeling of worthlessness churning beneath the facade? Mason's father didn't find his handsome mother tied to tracks. He was not deceptive—and that's not a family secret. You be the judge. Mason, here speaking: My father comes back to me often. He came back last night; with a flat wide nose, a plate in his lip, a sculptured skull, looking through a mask. From the inside of his head I now look out at you: you are wearing my face, yet you are not me. I lost a forefather in the bush—on the q.t.—one in the gas station while the Cadillac was being filled, the oil changed. My father has grown fat. He's a model of virtue yet he has cloven hooves. He smokes and rubs his red eyes. He has forgotten the taste of innocence: he has nothing to declare. His head and especially his
sad eyes are not truly his own. He is up against obstructionists. He is a fat, fat man sunning himself in the sunchair. There's wet, cut grass before him: something he has accomplished: the beer he holds is his reward. My father liked seeing my mother, when they were still together, in summer prints. Now he is discussing symbolism, the conflict and exchange between Church and State, the value of a muse, with his smart girlfriend, a college dropout. His African nose flares, just slightly: this happens when he's tense, excited. He now looks less like a prince of rogues. His complexity is authentic. Skin? The inside tissue of darkness turned the blowup-blue of the Black Hole. Every night I dream of my father—now that he's, how'd ya say in Anglais?
dead. Is
he dead-
dead?
I ask ‘cause he comes cloaked in his own flesh, even now. See him coming across the night sky which is like a sheet of fifty-by-fifty black metal—used in bridge construction. He's dangerous yet undefined: he has nothing to confess. He's wet from the rain falling from the white moon. He's reachieved innocence through having emerged from that romantic ooze of damnation known otherwise as Getting-Along. The setting is not bleak not a trap and there is no charm in the spell he conjures. My father is still sad. And still. Sadness swallows him. He is also a stranger to me, as I am to my sons, my daughters. He's slightly on the lunatic fringe, yet somehow free of dereliction. At least
he
believes in me. He's a stranger coming in lightning, crossing the construction site. My father gives in to a dream of the werewolf. His howl sticks in his throat as he pulls himself to the edge where he falls peacefully into a muddy swimming pool in a backyard in Atlanta. I am in Chicago. A foghorn is the last sound he hears. The light from my welding rod, his last light: this is lineage. Then he recovers
for
me: old Clootie. Infernal Angle. There's no bilking in his action. My father's face multiplies in the night. Is there such a thing as interchangeability with one's father? I could not imagine my father a hero—Salt of the Earth. To his generation he is a constant threat because that whole generation was
caught in the act
—and he wasn't. He is the Marquis de Sade, the eternal infidel, Lucifer, victim of meddlers and muddled
affairs. I sleep dreamless in self-defense, taking transmigration with Kafka seriously. Outside the dream, in a barbershop, he looks out the window: through it, the Deer woman walking up a path. She could be Painted Turtle's mother. All flat surfaces. My father's metabolism is slow. He worries about his feet and his heart and his ribcage and his fingers—he has arthritis. He worries about the chemical balance of his body—yet he isn't health conscious exactly, sees no trapdoors, steps on no thin ice, does not have the “Bullfrog Blues.” The moon outside above the road lights the way for my father, like D.H. Lawrence's, when he is stumbling home drunk. Except my father does not drink—is not a drunk. A lame duck, yeah, but not a scoundrel. My father has a gun in a gun-holster strapped to his chest. He is unbelievably like a Hollywood gangster in the way he carries himself. Yet he has no hideout, no illusions, no contact man, fix, hype, buster-and-screw man, no biter, no acetylene torch. He says don't be like me, be an artist. In the sand my father finds a skull-bone. He places it on his dresser. He watches it for a week then decides to paint it yellow. Why yellow, which yellow? What kind of paint? My father often feels unloved—and loved, by the wrong women, too passionately. His secret life is inflamed with the quality of hurt. His facial muscles won't relax. The nurse takes his blood count at the free clinic, his girlfriend counts his socks. Holes. A peewee soft-song man sings outside his window. He waits for the train. It arrives late. Although it is late it's still the seven-forty-seven. As though walking into a hornet's nest, he steps up onto it. Through the window he sees the rotten roof of the station. It's raining. The roof leaks. On the platform eight virgins are collecting for the March of Dimes. At his foot is a shopping bag. In it: the infamous skull-bone. He's a bagman. Smell the cool wet morning? Where's he going? He gets off in the city. We watch him walk with his bag. Slightly stooped. He enters the Magnan-Rockford building. With one of the keys on his key-ring he unlocks the basement door marked
Janitor.